Free Ancient Places by Jack Nisbet

so much of the Corps’ sustenance is filled with important details.
    He compared cous to the ginseng he had grown up with back in Virginia and the baked camas bulbs that hospitable tribes had fed to the white visitors from the moment they arrived in the Columbia drainage. Lewis not only paid close attention to cooking and preservation methods that might benefit the Corps, but he also caught a hint of the seasonal rounds involved in collecting and processing the resource.
    The cows is a knobbed root of an irregularly rounded form not unlike the Gensang in form and consistence. This root they collect, rub off a thin black rhind which covers it and pounding it expose it in cakes to the sun. these cakes are about an inch and ¼ thick and 6 by 18 in width, when dryed they either eat this brad [bread] alone without any further preperation, or boil it and make a thick muselage; the latter is most comin and much the most agreeable. The flavorof this root is not very unlike the gensang. this root they collect as early as the snows disappear in the spring and continue to collect it until the quawmash [camas] supplys it’s place which happens about the latter end of June.
    As the Corps stockpiled food for its upcoming journey, the great quantities of roots processed with mortar and pestle by Nez Perce women became all the more evident. On May 19, a group of his men returned from a trading session with“about 6 bushels of the cows roots and a considerable quantity of bread of the same materials.”
    Recalling their difficult mountain journey of the previous fall, the Americans wanted still more. The captains debated sending the crew out to dig on their own but thought better of it.“We would make the men collect these roots themselves but there are several species of hemlock which are so much like the cows that it is difficult to discriminate them from the cows and we are afraid that they might poison themselves,” wrote Lewis. He was wise to be cautious: the extremely toxic water hemlock,
Cicuta douglasii,
is also a member of the parsley family, and it does grow in that vicinity. Plateau plant identification is not an easy learning curve for newcomers.
    Choosing to rely on local knowledge, Lewis and Clark issued an allowance of trade goods to the men so they could each purchase“a parsel of roots and bread from the natives as his stores for the rocky mountains.” The visitors continued to barter for more cous until early June, when they decided they had enough to see them through the mountain pass. By then, the Nez Perce women had switched their focus to digging camas bulbs. These the Americans found much less palatable,leading to disappointment with the tribe’s departing gift.“The Broken Arm gave Capt. C. a few dryed Quawmas [camas] roots as a great present,” wrote Lewis on their last day. “In our estimation those of cows are much better, I am confident they are much more healthy.”
Salt and Pepper
    On a recent cold morning in early March, botanist Pam Camp and I strolled along the western curl of the Columbia River’s Big Bend. Behind us, the North Cascades remained fully wrapped in winter’s grip, but in the lower country, the snow had melted away from the southern exposures. Ropes of freshly exposed gopher work glistened with frost, and although the first buttercups had yet to appear, we were hopeful that the seasonal biscuitroot clock had begun to tick. Camp’s experienced eye landed on a short strand of green thread easing up from a crack in the rocky ground. A few steps farther along, more visible leaves branched upward, like tiny fingers reaching for the sun. We circled a pocket of shattered basalt where she spotted an umbrella, no larger than a thumbnail, made up of tiny white florets. I dropped to my knees to eye the dark purple anthers that bristled among the white petals—the inspiration for the flower’s common name of salt and pepper.
    Although most wildflower manuals equate salt and pepper